Hey ‘podner. A Calhoun rep makes his case
“The purpose of the meeting, is a fact finding meeting,” City Council member Tom Rasmussen said Thursday to kick off a “brown bag” lunchtime forum to discuss microhousing development in Seattle. Here’s the facts: most of the citizens who showed up in the middle of the work day to talk about aPodments, don’t like microhousing — “out of scale,” “too many,” “parking” — and many of those people live right here on Capitol Hill.
“The proliferation of these projects, in my neighborhood, Capitol Hill, is intense,” resident Carl Winter said during the public comments portion of Thursday’s session following a presentation by city staff about what their departments already have in the works to better regulate the dorm-style developments. We’ve embedded the presentation as well as the more-useful memo from city staff, below. If you also want to see the microhousing criticism — and a few defenders — first-hand, the Seattle Channel video is there, too. But we’re warning you — anger and frustration abounds if maybe falling a little short of the angry mobs with “pitchforks” Publicola promises.
From the city slides on microhousing shown Thursday
It’s not clear if the Rasmussen-led discussion will be a precursor to a possible push for a moratorium on these developments that he told CHS he was considering.
Rasmussen said he has heard from people and groups all over the city but that the calls for action from Capitol Hill were especially strong. Winter and others involved with groups like Reasonable Density Seattle — we looked at the group’s efforts last year — took Thursday’s opportunity to make their case that the city is not acting quickly enough to better regulate the projects which skirt the city’s review processes for multi-unit developments by categorizing the buildings as boarding houses.
“I don’t care who lives in these places…the process is being circumvented,” one speaker said. Continue reading
